Authors: Theresa Snyder
He got up out of Harriet's bed and stumbled
downstairs in the dark, to look for some aspirin. It had been a
stressful day. There was a problem at work that took way too much
time to resolve. That and his celebration with Suzan made him late
for Harriet's dinner party. She spent the evening passing him dirty
looks every time she caught his eye. This was a very important
party for her. A fundraiser for a charity she served on as a board
member.
He looked through the bathroom cabinets then
the kitchen drawers. Finally he resorted to the desk drawers in the
study for the aspirin. That's when he found the copy of the Will.
Harriet had just executed it the week before. It left everything to
him! Everything! The company, the stock, the house, everything! He
couldn't believe it! All his patience had paid off. He eased back
in his chair. He realized that his headache was gone. Now all he
needed to do was get rid of the big headache upstairs. He would
make it look like an accident.
Hughes/Gordon still retained some of his
connections with the black market. He acquired a poison that, taken
in small quantities, ate holes in the muscles of the heart. It left
no trace behind. Harriet would appear to have died as her father,
of heart trouble. He wouldn't leave the job to be bungled this time
by some fool. He would do it himself over a period of time, perhaps
as much as six months. Then he would have everything. He started
administering the poison within a week of finding the Will.
Jake sat in his cell aboard the transport vessel.
Injustice had been swift. It took the court only two days to
convict him of murder and sentence him to life on a penal
planet.
With civilization so spread out these days
someone accused of a crime didn't always get to face their
accusers. In this case, they used holographic image depositions
that were taken by the authorities at the time of the incident. The
holographic images were computer generated and programmed to
respond as the person who made them initially would have based on
their testimony. There was a flaw in this system. If the person was
lying the holographic image just continued to lie. Jake didn't have
a chance.
The guard walked by the cell door. "Another
hour and you're history, Harcourt." He thumped the bars with his
club maliciously before moving on down the row.
Delightful people they have in this place
Jake thought. He wondered how the company would be when he arrived
at his destination.
All mercenaries knew about penal colonies
even though no one ever successfully escaped from one. Their air
space was marked in bright red on all maps. You had to avoid their
area or risk annihilation. All penal planets were protected and
guarded by a drone ship piloted by androids. They spoke an
unbreakable binary code type language. The ship and its crew were
programmed to destroy anything larger than 10' x 3' x 3' that
entered their air space. That was the size of the capsule they used
to shoot the prisoners from the ship to the surface of the planet.
It was just big enough for the man and his kit.
On Jake's way here he was introduced to the
contents of the kit by a viewing the guards presented in his cell.
It consisted of a tent, a thermal blanket and five days ration of
food and water. The tape also showed you the capsule and assured
you that it was thoroughly tested for safety. The thing was shot
down like a probe to the planet's surface. A parachute opened when
it entered the planet's atmosphere. The capsule opened on impact
with the ground. Jake heard that many prisoners committed suicide
before they ever left the transport vessel. Now he knew why. The
ride down didn't look like it was going to be much fun.
Jake had to admit he was scared. He would
have felt a lot better if he'd looked out in the courtroom
yesterday to see Arr and Tim. There had been no word from them
since they left. If they were here now, following this ship, they
might be planning to intercept the capsule when it was launched or
overpower the transport vessel with his and Tim's cruisers. Even
though the Galactic ship was heavily armed they might have a chance
with both mercenary vessels. Jake prayed that was the case because
he knew that once he was left on the planet there would be no
escape.
Jake felt the cruiser come to a stop. It
would have parked just outside the range of the drone vessel's
guns. The guard came back with his detachment of five men. They
removed Jake from his cell and walked him to the launch bay on the
ship. The capsule was lying open on the platform. As they
approached it Jake thought to himself it looked a lot like a
coffin. He stepped up to it, than hesitated. Three of the guards
drew their weapons. Jake had the fleeting thought that it might be
better to be dusted then submit to this ride and life on a penal
planet. Almost in the same moment that part of him that always
fought back, no matter how tough the situation, kicked in.
He stepped into the capsule and lay down. He
had a moment when they first closed the lid that he thought he
couldn't breathe, but it passed. He swore if he ever got out of
this he would have more understanding and sympathy for Arr each
time they went somewhere in the pod.
Jake felt the launch and the force of speed
as he accelerated toward the planet's surface. Even though the
capsule was made of quillanium the heat as he passed through the
outer atmosphere of the planet was suffocating. He realized as the
temperature started to drop and the capsule seemed to drift rather
than speed forward that he was entering the inner atmosphere. Tim
and Arr were not there waiting for the launch as he hoped. He would
now be a permanent resident of Penal Planet #18.
On impact Jake heard the latches on the
capsule lid release. Though he was disoriented from the ride, and
the not so soft landing, he reached up to lift the lid and get
out.
The lid was yanked out of his hands. He was
blinded by the bright sun light as hands reached in and grabbed
him. They lifted him out and shoved him to one side. He stood bent
over with his hands on his knees trying to regain his balance and
orientation. When his eyes adjusted and he got his breath back, he
straightened up to see a scene that at once frightened and
fascinated him.
There were perhaps a half dozen starved, ill
clad men fighting over the contents of his kit. Some of them
carried homemade weapons of sharpened sticks or rocks attached to
wood handles with vines to make clubs. It was a free for all -
everyman for themselves. Before Jake could intervene the water was
spilled, the tent and blanket discarded and the food devoured.
Jake was to learn in the weeks to come that
the other prisoners saw his capsule's trail in the sky and were
lying in wait for him. They were all starving. Some had already
died. The whole planet was infested with a plague of locusts. The
few crops the inmates were cultivating were eaten by the insects.
This in itself would not have been bad, but the locusts ate
everything in their path. The forest and its usual bounty were
devastated.
If there was an atmospheric change the drone
ship and its crew would have registered it and made the appropriate
report to command headquarters. A swarm of locusts however, did not
register on their sensors so eventually the ship and its crew would
be guarding a dead planet. Starving was going to be a horrible way
to die. Jake wished he'd had second thoughts about taking that
dusting before coming down.
Arr had been sitting here listening to the binary
chatter between the drone and its android crew for almost a month
now. Tim and he were too late. Too late for Hughes and too late for
Jake.
It took them eight long days to get to
Hughes. He was dead when they finally arrived. There was a woman
who was arrested for his murder. The unofficial word on the streets
was a story of betrayal. The lady, Harriet Caruthers, was an
heiress who was tricked by Hughes into willing him everything. But
the last few weeks she questioned changes in his routine and put an
investigator on his tail. She found he was being unfaithful. She
was a desperate woman. If she couldn't have him no one else could.
She poisoned him. Harriet felt remorse later. He was the only man
she ever loved. She turned herself in the day before Tim and Arr
arrived. Hughes had ruined one more life, but he would not ruin
another thanks to Harriet Caruthers.
Without Hughes testimony Tim knew they were
in major trouble. They needed to return to Rigil Four before the
trial was over and there weren't any options left.
They were too late the second time. Jake was
convicted, sentenced to life, and transported to Penal Planet #18.
Tim tried everything. He got the best attorney money could buy.
They attempted to appeal Jake's case. The court found no new
evidence and Tim's testimony was dismissed as hearsay. The appeal
never even made it to court.
Tim told Arr the facts about penal planets.
He tried to get the boy to accept the hard truths of the situation.
Jake was gone. He watched the kid deteriorate before his eyes. Tim
thought he would stop eating and sleeping again, but he didn't. He
continued to take Tim's orders, but emotionally he became a shell
of his former self.
One morning Arr informed Tim he was going to
Penal Planet #18. He took Jake's cruiser out of orbit within the
hour and Tim tagged along.
They sat for a week just out of the range of
the drones guns. The Henu was listless. For hours he did nothing,
but sit and listen to the drone and its crew's sub-space
chatter.
Tim was restless. Over the years he found
that the best medicine for a hopeless problem was action and plenty
of it! Get your mind off your troubles. So, when an opportunity for
a job came across the system he accepted. He spent three days, all
the time he had, trying to convince Arr to go with him. He couldn't
just leave the kid. Jake would never have forgiven him. He owed it
to Jake to look after the boy. But Arr wouldn't budge. When Tim
tried to force him both, Arr and Kay-o turned on him. He finally
took to his own ship and headed toward the awaiting battle by
himself. That was almost three weeks ago.
Arr was sure if he heard enough of the drone
and its crew's language he could learn it, but they spoke so
little. Arr kept the communications system tuned into them twenty
four hours a day. He recorded it all so he could play back what
little he had over and over again. Finally it was someone else's
death that saved Jake's life.
It was a small cruiser and it drifted into
the drone's air space. Maybe it was on auto pilot and had not been
programmed around the red zone. Maybe the pilot saw Jake's craft
and assumed he was in a safe area. Arr didn't have a chance to warn
them. It was destroyed within moments. The drone ship and its crew
came to life; there was a flurry of chatter, then silence again as
soon as the ship exploded. In those few moments Arr got what he
needed. He went to work establishing a hook up between the drone
ship's computer and Jake's. From the first day aboard the Calpernia
Arr started to learn the workings of the computer. When the link
was established he did a very simple thing he reprogrammed the
drone and its crew to accept something as large as a pod to land on
the planet's surface. He got Kay-o into the pod and filled his
pocket with Red Raspberry Goo Chews. He would need Kay-o to obey
him without question on this trip.
The place was a disaster. The landscape was
devastated. Arr had never seen anything like it. Every bush, tree
and the ground itself was stripped of anything living, anything
green. Arr tossed Kay-o a fist full of Goo Chews and commanded him
to guard the pod. The dar-dolf settled down obediently in the
pilot's seat. Arr went to search for Jake.
He found the first dead body within the
hour. Within the next four hours he found a dozen more. They all
appeared to have starved. He found evidence of them having eaten
bark off the trees, something that looked like pine needle soup,
even the leather of their boots. His hopes for Jake were fading
with every step he took.
He found Jake in the sixth hour of his
search. He was in a cave by a small lake. He was alive, but just
barely. Jake was a skeleton of his former self. Arr had no trouble
picking him up and carrying him to the landing pod. He had probably
lost fifty to sixty pounds.
When Arr arrived at the pod Kay-o wasn't
sure he should let Arr bring the bundle of rags he was carrying
aboard until he scented Jake. Then it took all the rest of the Goo
Chews to calm him down enough to get back into the pod for lift
off.
Back on board the cruiser Arr reset the
computer aboard the drone. He would leave no evidence that anyone
ever escaped. When the GO found out about the inhabitants of the
planet, if they ever did, they would think Jake died among
them.
Arr set course for his home planet. Then
went to see what he could do for Jake.
Tim received a message from Arr apologizing for his
actions at their last parting and begging him to come to the Henu
planet. No reason given just coordinates. Tim figured he owed it to
the kid. He made the last five years of Jake's freedom happy. Jake
couldn't have had a more loyal partner. He was glad to hear that
the kid obviously gave up his vigil at the penal planet and went
home for some R&R. Maybe he was ready to join up with Tim. Tim
decided on the way that he'd be happy to take Arr on.
Arr and Kay-o met Tim's pod when it set down
beside Jake's at the lake's edge.
"Lovely little place you got here." Tim
greeted warmly. "You look...."
"Jake's alive and I have him here," Arr
interrupted Tim's speech just as he was going to say that the kid
looked the best he'd seen him in a long time.